This dahlia is “blue”, not “black”, but no less pestilent, noteworthy for being the first script penned by Raymond Chandler, George Marshall’s murder mystery casts Alan Ladd as Johnny Morrison, a discharged US Navy aviator, who returns to his homeland in Hollywood, California and only to be hounded as a prime suspect after his disloyal wife Helen (Dowling) is offed by his own pistol.

Helen is unregenerate in Chandler’s script, a satiny minx who dallies with Eddie Harwood (da Silva is delectably in the form of a well-clad, moustachioed snake), the owner of a night club which gives the title of the movie, she is bitter, bibulous and self-destructive, her temperamental sea change is rooted in a tragedy that she shouldn’t be the sole culprit, but as per in Chandler’s misogynous, or more accurate, misanthropic views, she has no redeeming feature (though Dowling spunkily if subtly spikes the vilification with an air of defiance and vulnerability that reminds viewers that Helen is not a total monster, she might be merely a lonely girl defeated by the world around her, and gets acrid towards the missing father of their child).

But what is loud and clear is that Johnny is not the killer, after he storms off and inexplicably leaves his pistol behind, he is picked up by the petite doll Joyce Harwood (Lake), who actually is Harwood’s wife, yet the story never cares to elucidate her side of story since she will soon be reduced to a distraction rather than a key factor in Johnny’s quest of truth. Is their encounter a chance meeting or by her design, if it is the latter, what is her motive? That’s as murky as the movie’s pitch black backdrop.

Granted, Ladd is in the pink as the diminutive, unflappable, hardboiled veteran, who can be pugnacious at a word and not easily overpowered; as Buzz, Johnny’s shell-shock comrade-in-arms, Bendix has to overplay the sonic disturbance that he handles with no dexterity, although, glaringly, we are aware that it serves a grand purpose to this whodunit, but Chandler concedes to alter the original end under the pressure of the Navy, for casting a murderous shadow on returning soldiers, thus a forced one is purveyed in the last minute, to spectator’s utter dismal, the killer is an out-and-out reprobate.

A fine film-noir if, technically speaking, nothing too spectacular to elaborate on, at least it is a taut, wholly composed divertissement that shines a light on the city’s nightmarish tenderloin, and pathetically, there is no peace for war heroes, not even on the land of peace.

referential entries: Billy Wilder’s DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944, 8.2/10); George Marshall’s DESTRY RIDES AGAIN (1939, 7.1/10).